December 10, 2018

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined the opportunity to determine whether states are required to fund abortion businesses under the Medicaid Act. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented and would have agreed to hear the cases because they present a question that “is important and recurring.”

Currently, there is a split in lower courts over whether the Medicaid Act grants individual Medicaid patients a private right of action to sue in federal court in order to challenge a state’s disqualification of their preferred Medicaid provider. Two states, Kansas (Andersen v. Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri) and Louisiana (Gee v. Planned Parenthood of Gulf Coast), asked the Supreme Court to resolve this conflict.